Greg Albo - Böcker

No government jurisdiction in Canada has so radically transformed its public policies over the past decades as Ontario, and yet the province has also maintained a striking degree of political stability in its party system. Since the 1990s, neoliberalism has been the point of reference in constructing policy agendas for all of Ontario's political parties. It has guided the strategy for governance of the dominant Liberal Party since 2003, even as it divides the province between workers and employers, north and south, rural and urban, and racialized minorities and the majority population. With a focus on the governments of Mike Harris, Dalton McGuinty, and Kathleen Wynne, Divided Province brings together leading researchers to dissect the province's public policies since the 1990s. Presenting original, state-of-the-art research, the book demonstrates that, although the Conservative government of Mike Harris implemented the sharpest and most profound shift towards the establishment of a neoliberal regime in the province, the subsequent Liberal governments consolidated that neoliberal turn. The essays in this volume explore the consequences of this ideological turn across a spectrum of policies, including health, education, poverty, energy, employment, manufacturing, and how it has impacted workers, women, First Nations, and other distinct communities. The first book to offer a comprehensive critical account of neoliberalism in Ontario, Divided Province overturns conventional readings of the province's politics and suggests that building a more democratic and egalitarian alternative to the current orthodoxy requires nothing less than a radical rupture from existing policies and political alliances. Without such a decisive break, political space may well open up again for the populist right.

As digital technology became integral to the capitalist market dystopia of the first decades of the 21st century, it refashioned both our ways of working and our ways of consuming, as well as our ways of communicating. And as the Covid-19 pandemic coursed through the world’s population, adding tens of billions of dollars to the profits of high-tech corporations, its impact revealed grotesque class and racial inequalities and the gross lack of public investment, planning and preparation which lay behind the scandalously slow and inadequate responses of so many states.

As digital technology became integral to the capitalist market dystopia of the first decades of the 21st century, it refashioned both our ways of working and our ways of consuming, as well as our ways of communicating. And as the Covid-19 pandemic coursed through the world’s population, adding tens of billions of dollars to the profits of high-tech corporations, its impact revealed grotesque class and racial inequalities and the gross lack of public investment, planning and preparation which lay behind the scandalously slow and inadequate responses of so many states.

The current matrix of capitalaccumulation is shifting, but what is coming?New terms abound – plutocratic plunder, political capitalism, techno-feudalism,techno-futurism, etc. Some see a new ‘habitation economy’ of post-industrialismin which the provisioning of non-standardized services replaces commodityproduction. Others foresee an unstable interregnum of increasinglyauthoritarian states fusing with far-right movements. The common imagery is ofa capitalist class barricaded off in securitized enclaves from the disruptivestorms of climate change and the anger of dislocated and hyper-stressed workingclasses. It is important to untangle thesecontending themes and identify key social trends, contradictions, andlongstanding as well as emerging social conflicts in this ‘late-stagecapitalism’.  In what ways does the return of Donald Trump to the Americanpresidency represent this  new phase of capitalism? How are these changesbeing registered in state economic apparatuses, in institutional powers, and innew economic and political practices? How is the uneven insertion of statesinto the US empire and world market being reproduced and challenged in terms ofgeopolitical and military primacy and through  trade wars redrawingeconomic zones? And where is the left scratching out new political spacesamidst the economic ruins? These are the many questions the essays  inthis volume take on.

The current matrix of capitalaccumulation is shifting, but what is coming?New terms abound – plutocratic plunder, political capitalism, techno-feudalism,techno-futurism, etc. Some see a new ‘habitation economy’ of post-industrialismin which the provisioning of non-standardized services replaces commodityproduction. Others foresee an unstable interregnum of increasinglyauthoritarian states fusing with far-right movements. The common imagery is ofa capitalist class barricaded off in securitized enclaves from the disruptivestorms of climate change and the anger of dislocated and hyper-stressed workingclasses. It is important to untangle thesecontending themes and identify key social trends, contradictions, andlongstanding as well as emerging social conflicts in this ‘late-stagecapitalism’.  In what ways does the return of Donald Trump to the Americanpresidency represent this  new phase of capitalism? How are these changesbeing registered in state economic apparatuses, in institutional powers, and innew economic and political practices? How is the uneven insertion of statesinto the US empire and world market being reproduced and challenged in terms ofgeopolitical and military primacy and through  trade wars redrawingeconomic zones? And where is the left scratching out new political spacesamidst the economic ruins? These are the many questions the essays  inthis volume take on.

The war in Afghanistan has been a major policy commitment and central undertaking of the Canadian state since 2001: Canada has been a leading force in the war, and has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on aid and reconstruction. After a decade of conflict, however, there is considerable debate about the efficacy of the mission, as well as calls to reassess Canada’s role in the conflict. An authoritative and strongly analytical work, Empire’s Ally provides a much-needed critical investigation into one of the most polarizing events of our time.This collection draws on new primary evidence – including government documents, think tank and NGO reports, international media files, and interviews in Afghanistan – to provide context for Canadian foreign policy, to offer critical perspectives on the war itself, and to link the conflict to broader issues of political economy, international relations, and Canada’s role on the world stage. Spanning academic and public debates, Empire’s Ally opens a new line of argument on why the mission has entered a stage of crisis.

Since beginning publication in 1964, The Socialist Register has been one of the most important sources of engaged, critical, and influential theoretical interventions on the socialist left. Released as an annual with a focus on publishing rigorous, sustained pieces that take up particular themes, it has always been committed to developing an independent, nonsectarian relationship with Marxism. This volume - the Register's first-ever reader - grapples with the question of whether political organisation is a necessary part of the struggle by the working-class to overthrow capitalism. In pieces published over the course of publication's entire history contributors, from Ralph Miliband to Jean-Paul Sartre, examine various aspects of this theme.

It is often remarked that critical - and especially Marxist - state theory began to lose its central place in the study of comparative politics in the 1980s. Ironically, this shift occurred just as neoliberal policies were transforming the social form and spatial scales of the state, radically restructuring the practices of state economic intervention, and extending the capabilities of the coercive arms of the state. This volume addresses the 'impoverishment of state theory' over the last decades and insists on the continued salience of class analysis to the study of states. The book's title, State Transformations, reflects several central themes in the comparative study of states: the neoliberal restructuring of capitalist states, the changing economic and political architecture of imperialism, and the prospects of a democratic transformation of capitalist states. The essays collected here are intended to honor the memory of Leo Panitch, whose influential body of work has shaped debates on the state, imperialism, and socialism over the past four decades.Contributors are: Clyde W. Barrow, Caio Bugiato, Frank Deppe, Ruth Felder, Ana Garcia, Sam Gindin, Doug Henwood, Martijn Konings, Colin Leys, Sebnem Oguz, Bryan D. Palmer, Dennis Pilon, Larry Savage, Charles Smith, Michalis Spourdalakis and Hilary Wainwright.